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Each September at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, we wait for the enrollment census report, which we use as our official enrollment for the year. We wait for the sixth week of classes because up until that time, students are adding and dropping classes, and typically by late September, things have stabilized.

This year total headcount enrollment at UH Hilo is down 0.7% or 19 students, down from 2,668 to 2,649. The lesson here is that every student makes a difference when we are recruiting. Nineteen, after all, is not that high of a number, but it is the difference between an increase and decrease. When I get the numbers, I always look a bit deeper, however, to see the story behind the story.

Our new freshman class, for example is over 18% bigger than it was last year. That is indeed a bright spot and is a reflection of the hard work of our admissions team and others across our campus who have been reaching out to our community in numerous ways. Our Hawaiʻi resident enrollment is up, which tells me that our local students are realizing what a good place we are for them to continue their education. We have six fewer transfer students than we had last year, but as enrollments grow at Hawaiʻi Community College, I am optimistic that our transfer numbers will also turn a corner soon.

Among our local students, we have seen healthy increases in students from Pāhoa and Kamehameha Schools (both the Oʻahu and Keaʻau campuses). We have a few more students from Konawaena than we did last year, a sign that maybe more of our West Hawaiʻi students are seeing that value of staying on island to continue their education. Hilo High is up, Waiākea High is down a bit, but overall, our future is bright with the numbers of freshmen up more than either UH West Oʻahu or Mānoa.

After we look at numbers, we start to dig into the why. The majors which have seen the largest increases in new students this year are Kinesiology and Exercise Sciences, Exploratory Health Science (for students interested in a health profession), and Education Studies, which is a program we launched just last year.  Also showing a healthy increase in new enrollment are Nursing, Agriculture, Political Science, Physics (home of the new pre-engineering program), Hawaiian Studies, Chemistry (the most popular pre-Pharmacy major), and Administration of Justice (home of our new partnership with the Hawaiʻi Police Department and other state law enforcement agencies). A one-year snapshot does not indicate a trend, but the fact that so many of our students are seeking degrees in service professions gives me hope for the future.

Business enrollment remains strong, and it is still our most popular major, despite the fact that they did not record the biggest increase this year. Our business students find employment locally, nationally, and internationally.

As we look ahead, I am optimistic. On October 13, UH launched its Direct2UH initiative, whereby Hawaiʻi public high school students have a spot reserved at UH Hilo if they have a GPA of 2.7 or higher. Across the UH System, we are making it easier to choose UH and encourage our students to stay home for the excellent education the University of Hawaiʻi, and especially the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, can provide.

While we would all like to see higher numbers of students here at UH Hilo, our commitment to place-based, hands-on, community-engaged learning and opportunity for our students will make us successful at serving our island and our state. The signs for growth are good, we have excellent programs, and I look forward to our continued evolution as part of Hawaiʻi Island’s future.

With aloha,

Bonnie D. Irwin

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Chancellor Bonnie D. Irwin and the Executive Leadership Team delivered the 2025 State of the University Address on Sept 10.

Click slides to enlarge.

Chancellor Irwin opens the presentation:

He ʻelele au na ke Kulanui o Hawaiʻi ma Hilo, e hāpai aʻe nei i kēia ʻōlelo Hōʻoia ʻĀina, he honua ʻōiwi ʻo Hawaiʻi nona ka poʻe ʻōiwi o ka ʻāina, ʻo ia nā kānaka Hawaiʻi.

Me ke aloha nui au e hāpai nei i kēia Hōʻoia ʻĀina ma ka hoʻokipa ʻana i ka poʻe a pau e kipa mai ana i kēia lā, ma kēia ahupuaʻa ʻo Waiākea, ma ka moku o Hilo.

ʻO Hawaiʻi nei nō kēia ʻāina. Welina pumehana kākou.

On behalf of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, it is with profound reflection that I offer up this Hōʻoia ʻĀina, Land Acknowledgement, acknowledging Hawaiʻi as an Indigenous space whose original people are today identified as Native Hawaiians.

With much aloha, I offer up this Land Acknowledgement in welcome to all gathered this day, in the land division we call Waiākea, in the district of Hilo.

This land is Hawaiʻi itself. A warm greeting to all of us.

Fall 2025 Enrollment

Aloha and Good Afternoon.

I am pleased to welcome us all back to a new year and a new semester. There is much to celebrate this year and much still to work on in fulfilling our kuleana to our students and our island.

We rolled out the proverbial red carpet for our new students this year, with a full slate of orientation events, the successful Welina Bash last week, as well as some renovations to and painting of buildings and some sprucing up of the grounds.

Fall 2025 Faculty

Our faculty have been engaged in professional development around community engagement and career readiness, and some will be serving on newly formed AI task forces and committees.

Fall 2025 Staff

Our staff council continues to thrive, and our staff headcount has increased from last year, helping us to support students and get the word out about the great work we do.

Trends: New Freshmen and New Transfer Students

The numbers are not final yet. We are still a couple of weeks before census, but here is what I can tell you today.

While our total enrollment is down slightly from last year, we have had the largest increase in new freshmen in four years (18.8% as of 9/10/2025), outpacing in percentage both Mānoa and West Oʻahu. Transfers are up slightly. Hawaiʻi resident students are up and those of Filipino, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander origin, among others, are also up. This shows the good work of our admissions staff, fanning out across the state to tell the story of UH Hilo. As our work with Echo Delta expands this year, we expect to see even stronger numbers next fall.

Trends: 1-Year Retention Rates and Graduation Rates

The freshman to sophomore retention rate for 2024 was the highest in our history, and both 4-year and 6-year graduation rates were up.

I’ll get back to you after census about the 2025 rates, but so far the signs are positive.

Extramural Contract & Grant Awards

Grants earned hit the highest mark in over a decade, and though the total is somewhat misleading, as I will get to in a moment, these numbers reflect a lot of good work on the part of faculty and staff.

We may very well expect a downturn in RTRF [Research, Training, and Revolving Funds] funds next year, as many federal agencies are cutting back on allowable indirect costs, but we will not let that stop us from continuing the good work of applied research in our community.

Federal Impacts

The federal executive orders, funding and personnel cuts, and other changes have certainly had an impact on our work over the last several months.

You will see some different language on our websites, as we pivot from discussing equity to support for all students. Our values remain the same, however, in that we are here to make sure that each student gets the support they need to thrive, both at UH Hilo and when they graduate.

We lost our LSAMP [Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation] grant, which provided research stipends for undergraduates across the Pacific. Both UH Hilo and all our partner institutions are working on ways to provide these valuable experiences for undergraduates in other ways.

We were lucky in that the most concerning changes to student financial aid were emended in the federal funding bill earlier this year, but the UH System continues to monitor new EOs [Executive Orders], ensuing court cases, and any actions which may impact our core operations. We’re working across the [UH] System to ensure that our processes are consistent, and students are treated fairly, regardless of which campus they are on.

WSCUC Visit and Recommendations

Finally, we had a successful WSCUC visit in April. The visiting team as well as the commission noted the hard work we had done on our various plans, and had one major recommendation: implement!!

Sitting on the Commission this summer, I learned that notices of concern and special visits are becoming more frequent across the WSCUC membership, as many of our colleagues are facing the same challenges in enrollment and budget that we are.

I will now turn things over to the members of the Executive Leadership Team, so that they can outline their priorities for the year within the framework of our strategic plan and the [UH] System strategic imperatives. Time permitting, I’ll be back later to talk about some of the actions being undertaken at the system level and their impact on UH Hilo.

See full presentation at UH Hilo Stories.

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During the academic year, it is often difficult for students to carve out time for in-depth, individualized real-world experiences that are key to their learning how to apply what they’ve learned in class.

Thus, summer is the season of special projects for many of our students. The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo hosts a number of internship opportunities, both for our students and including kamaʻāina who return home from other institutions to live and work on our island. The transformation in these students from the nervous and excited young people who arrive for these programs in June to the confident, poised professionals whom I have seen present their final reports is striking and a joy to see.

The Akamai Internship Program, led by the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators at University of California Observatories in partnership with the UH System, is an eight-week summer program, with stipend, for Hawaiʻi university and college students who want hands-on work experience at an observatory, company, or scientific facility in Hawaiʻi.

Akamai addresses specific workforce needs for Hawaiʻi observatories and has a community of mentors in support of students from a wide range of STEM majors (science, technology, engineering, and math). This year’s participants presented their work in four public forums, two of which I was delighted to attend. I won’t pretend I understood all the technical aspects of their projects, but they clearly did, as they presented with confidence and authority. It’s easy to see why hundreds of Akamai alumni have gone on to establish careers in related fields.

The Pacific Internship Programs for Exploring Science (PIPES) is a summer program that supports ʻāina-based internships in our local communities and island environments with the goal to grow the next generation of leaders in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. PIPES offers four program pathways — ancestral, ecological, community, and research — each focusing on internships that help students track into careers that improve the quality of life for themselves, their ʻohana, and their communities. Many alumni of this program work with state and federal agencies charged with environmental stewardship, jobs for which they are well prepared.

The first PIPES huakaʻi (field trip) of this summer was to Kealakekua and Kaʻawaloa, hosted by Hoala Kealakekua Nui, a local group dedicated to the stewardship of Kealakekua Bay’s natural and cultural environment, and our very own PIPES alumnus Kainalu Keliʻikuli-Grace. The interns say they found the excursion to be “a magical day spent in restoration, reconnection, and remembering, through aloha ʻāina,” and they look forward to growing their pilina (connection) with this community and wahi pana (legendary place).

Geology major Kamalani Poepoe is on her second year as a PIPES summer intern with Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, participating in geoscience research. In her first summer with the observatory, Kama explored the field of petrology, analyzing lava samples from the June 2023 eruption at Kīlauea volcano to gain a better understanding of how and why Kīlauea continues to erupt. This summer, she is using her petrology analysis techniques to study eruptions at Kīlauea’s summit between 2020 and 2023. Kama does her analytical work the UH Hilo geochemistry lab and is also aiding in eruption response at Kīlauea’s summit.

As I write this column, marine science major Hayden Niles is interning on the 68-meter exploration vessel Nautilus, exploring deep-sea habitats of the Marshall Islands. Out of hundreds of applicants, Hayden was chosen one of only 14 interns to join the expedition, working side-by-side with researchers on the 21-day expedition. The vessel is run by the Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit that conducts multitudes of oceanic expeditions. Hayden, who comes from South Dakota, says he became interested in the trust’s work after watching videos and streams of their expeditions when he was in high school. He says he’s thrilled to join the expedition, where he can “gain hands-on experience and further my passion for ocean exploration.”

One of my dreams for UH Hilo is that every student be given the opportunity to participate in this type of personally and professionally transformative internship experience. We are working hard to raise private funds and earn grants to support this work, as most students cannot afford to spend their summers concentrating on research and internship without some kind of stipend.

UH Hilo is an ideal place for students to experience hands-on, community- and ‘āina-engaged learning, and I look forward to continued growth — in our students, our university and our community — through increased opportunities for these high-impact experiences.

With aloha,

Bonnie D. Irwin

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